Battlefield 3 "Ultra" really a gimmick?

I've played the game and tested all modes, and have also looked through screen shots and compared them side by side at 1080p. Ultra mode has almost no improvements over High. Hell, even Medium looks close to Ultra.

I wonder if EA decided to drop some performance wasters into the code for the Ultra setting, as part of a deal with graphics card producers to get more business in the hardware sector. If it weren't for Ultra mode being so punishable, not many people would look past a GTX 570, even today.

AMD Radeon HD 7970M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

You lose half of your frames with the 7970M by choosing Ultra (70FPS on high), yet you gain next to nothing. I'm not saying nothing changes visually, but I am saying that the amount of change certainly isn't worth a loss of 35FPS.

Try this out:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/11/10/battlefield-3-technical-analysis/1
During actual game play, the difference between Ultra and High wouldn't even be noticed! Once you're past LOWEST settings, the resolution of textures doesn't even appear to improve! So what you are really taxing your GPU for is for more realistic shadow blurring and a minor resolution bump. And note that in this article, they explain that bumping AA to 4x decreases performance by a TON especially with AMD cards!

I will hand it to EA though. Even at lowest settings, the game looks incredible. The 7970M runs at 120FPS on low. Makes me feel confident about it standing strong until the next wave of consoles bring about newer, hyper-realistic games.

 

disable FXAA and leave everything else as Ultra, - FXAA nativelly blurs detail so you do not notice any quality increases. Imho its a little stupid from EA to add this feature into Ultra preset, when it actually results in worse image quality.

 

Couple things. That review ( which was one of the better ) was done shortly after release last year. Should really be done again to see if things have changed now that the product itself is more stable.

The difference between high and ultra is pretty significant. Ultra is adding alot more shadows, dust/glare affects, and fine details at distance. If you just look at things close you wont really see big differences.

Take a look at tree details from a distance, water, clouds/smoke and I think you can see more of the differences.

Problem is no mobile cards can really play ultra very well. So most never see the real benefits.

 

I agree with OP. There may be subtle differences between high and ultra, but it's just that... subtle. Will it really matter and will you really have time to enjoy the scenery and subtle differences when you're getting pummeled by tanks, jets, choppers, and surrounded by enemy soldiers? No.

 

^ true.

But when your day is done, your down in Metro waiting for the Train home, sometimes you may want to stop and just admire the real beauty.

 

The last level of performance increase is always a subtle increase and almost always requires a disproportionate cost to achieve. Such is the way of life. The difference between the second to last and next step down isn't even going to be mind altering though it may be more noticeable. The "cost" of that last step (whether in terms of hardware cost or FPS drop or whatever you lose for that last step) is always going to be something that isn't worth it for most players but a small price for that select few.

Keep in mind, where does it end? If that last step isn't worth it and you don't even offer it, the same rationale could be extended all the way down to playing football with Xs and Os. The hardware for that would be MUCH cheaper, why spend a dollar when you could spend 10 cents?

 

That's not even entirely the point. The point is that while it may push the limit of current mobile hardware, there's really nothing lost to the end user. Your analogy is a little extreme. It's more like if they used gold dipped shoe laces in the football players' shoes instead of traditional nylon, or having a perfectly manicured football field versus one with varying height blades of grass.

I have no issue with them offering an Ultra setting. But it really doesn't benefit anyone visually other than having bragging rights that someone's machine can run the game at XX FPS at Ultra settings.

 

Of course I see what you are saying but there definitely is benefit in ultra settings, providing your machine can handle it, just as there is benefit in 1080p vs 768p and high detail vs low detail. It all adds to the overall enjoyment of the game just like higher fps.

Again if single mobile cards could take advantage more people would want to run it. Most, myself included, unfortunately are not going to see the benefits of bf3 in ultra @ 1080p.

 

i do agree with the OP

@ medium settings with a couple on high for good measure and no AA and no FXAA (blury mess that will ruin definition) it looks identical to my eyes, there are more improvements to be had (imo) in better textures rather than the glare on some dust.

its still a console game, with an interesting question raised, if pc gamers thought it wasn't a proper pc game politically it wouldn't have sold and the multi million franchise would die a death so did they do exactly what the OP mentions and fool pc gamers into thinknig ultra was better when in fact running some minor post processing in unoptimised format took away 40FPS and made all the SLI / Crossfire owners smug as they could keep the game at 60-70 with everything on.

i wouldnt put it past EA this is big business after all.

 

It's been known since release that ultra settings were rather "gimmicky". I run the game on medium settings with textures being the only high setting and it looks just as nice as high and ultra.

 

Shadows and texture detail. Admire it if your into it, I am.

It's like having amplifiers that go to 11...Its 1 louder...

 

I agree. I was very competitive in battlefield 1942 (Had free EA games for a few years ) Battlefield 3 was my first chance in a long time to invest some time, get good and maybe bask in my former glory.

Naturally to get the competitive edge I went through the settings over and over with a fine tooth comb to see what would make players easiest to spot, reduce any sort of distractions and just hope to get the jump on people...

The whole lot looks the same..

Probably because they don't want people doing exactly what I was trying to do..

I suck at BF3 btw.

 

Even on my desktop, with a 570m, my roommate tested BF3 from my normal settings of Ultra to Low and left it there, and I played for nearly a week on low without really noticing a difference... Then again, I don't admire the scenery, I just look for the other guys (in fact, some of the shadows, etc make it harder to see the other people, too much clutter in the way)

 

Haha nice! Low does look really good for the performance.

Do you go to UC Berkeley? A friend of mine, Nathaniel Pyle, is going there (freshman). He is trying to get on the baseball team! I am going to San Jose State.

 

Yep, I'm going to be a senior (technically a junior, trying to grad in 3). But yeah, my Sager right now can play at medium, and it's still really nice looking, hovers around 55-60 FPS, so imma lower something else such that i can get pure 60... need that vsync. Although right now the game crashes every time i alt+tab out of it :/

 

Also I don't notice any difference betwen high and ultra.

I play on medium at 1080p (35-50 fps)

 

ultra makes everything look more glossy, that's about it.

 

I'm on ultra, no AA and no motion blur. 43-71 FPS.

 

You're saying that AA really makes performance go down the drain that bad? The GTX 675M was recorded to get what, 25FPS average on ultra?

 

AA is a major bandwidth suck. At native resolution there's no need for it whatsoever either. I've found in many cases if you have a weaker GPU, it's better to play at 1080p no AA lowest settings than 720p with 4xAA and higher settings because the AA kills performance.

 

Yeah AA puts me into the 21-35 range. I'm generally at 55-63 FPS on a 64 TDM server. I drop into the 43 ish range when helicopters are turning the ground into fire around me. Smoke spamming seems to be a non issue as far as lagging.


I'm overclocked as well. So that will skew things.